Hidden in the small print

London Borough of Enfield are proposing to make changes to the operational arrangements for the Enfield Local Studies Centre and Museum. We believe the proposals will enable us to operate in a more efficient and cost effective way while retaining existing services and increasing access to the heritage resources of the borough through a programme of digitalisation.

Similar to other services across the Council, there is a need to make efficiencies. We believe that the proposals will lead to the continuation of a high quality service, while delivering further value for money.   

Local Studies Centre

The Enfield Local Studies  Centre identifies, acquires, and preserves archival materials that document the history of the London Borough of Enfield, and make such records available for the benefit of all its partners, residents and visitors.

Based at Thomas Hardy House since 2009, the Local Studies Centre is open Monday to Friday (9.30am to 5.00pm).

Currently, customers need to visit the Centre at Thomas Hardy House in Enfield Town to access most of the resources available, or contact the Centre by telephone, email or post. In the last year, 2,761 people visited the Centre and we received 1,528 queries by telephone or email.

It is proposed the Centre’s resources are scanned and made available online, making them accessible 24/7 to the community of Enfield and beyond, without having to visit the Centre. The new online Local Studies resources will be an exciting and user-friendly online tool. We believe that a fully digitalised service has the potential to greatly increase access to these resources through personal computers and various other devices (for example, smartphones and tablets) for those with an interest in local and family history – along with other online ancestry resources, such as www.ancestry.com and the online census. 

To enable the service to concentrate on the wider digitalisation programme for these resources, we propose providing a visitors service by appointment only. This will help us to better manage public demand and will create capacity to focus on the digitalisation of local study resources.

Museum

We propose to move the Museum from the ground floor to the first floor of the Dugdale Centre. The new location will be accessible and is served by both a lift and staircase. The ground floor space to be vacated by the Museum could then be used for a variety of other purposes. Some of the Museum collection is already on display on the first floor and visitors will be able to see the Museum throughout the extended opening hours of the Dugdale Centre.

Closing date

Please let us know your views no later than 18 October 2015.

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